Wellington Speaking Union | Debating in Wellington

Congrats to Wellington College who last night won their first Premier A title since 2004 in front of a packed crowd at Turnbull House. Wellington College successfully negated “This House would prohibit price gouging after natural disasters”.

Commiserations to St Mary’s College, the runners-up.

Edward Foley from Wellington College won the Suffrage Cup for Best Speaker in the Grand Final.

The Premier A Grand Final will be held between St Mary’s College (affirming) and Wellington College (negating). The final will be held at 6:45 on Monday 19th September at Turnbull House, opposite Parliament.

The topic for the Grand Final is:

This House would prohibit price gouging after natural disasters

The finalists of Prem B have been determined so congratulations to Wellington High School and Scots College for being the top two teams in the grade this year. They will debate for the Fred McComish Trophy on Monday 12 September at Turnbull House starting at 7pm. The debate will be on the motion “That we should abolish all government restrictions and ratings on the content of entertainment media” with Wellington High affirming and Scots negating.

People are welcome to come and watch what should be an excellent occasion between two strong teams. There will be light refreshments served after the debate. Hope to see many of you there!

Hi all,

I have been contacted by a number of schools who are closed today and can’t make it tonight due to the weather and dangers of being stranded in the city. On top of that the weather forecast for this evening looks particularly bad and people are being warned to stay off the roads if they can – especially those coming in and out of the city.

As such we’ll be postponing the quarter-finals until next Tuesday 23rd August, still being held at St Mary’s College. I understand that this clashes with Premier B but there isn’t much other option, and that shouldn’t be too big an issue for people. However if you cannot make that date please let me know urgently and we can try to arrange an alternative time. However please make all efforts to have your teams available for that date.

The semi-finals will proceed as originally scheduled, on the 30th August. They are limited preparation so the postponement of tonight’s round won’t affect those.

Let me know if there are any issues, and good luck through the weather!

Seb.

sebtempleton@gmail.com / 0274284172

Congratulations to the 8 teams going through to the quarter-finals. Those teams in order are:

1. St Mary’s – 5 wins
2. Scots – 4 wins
3. Coll – 4 wins
4. QMC – 4 wins
5. Tawa – 3 wins
6. HVHS – 3 wins
7. St Cath’s – 3 wins
8. Marsden – 3 wins

Commiserations to the remaining teams on three wins – Heretaunga and HIBS. Heretaunga ended with too few win points. HIBS ended with the same number of win points as Marsden, but Marsden go through based on who beat whom as they won against HIBS in the third round.

The draw now folds, with the top seeded team seeing the bottom, and so on. So the draw for the quarter finals, with affirmative teams on the left, is:
St Mary’s v Marsden
St Cath’s v Scots
Coll v HVHS
QMC v Tawa

The quarter-finals will be on Tuesday 19th August. The prepared topic will be announced by Monday 11th July.

This coming Tuesday 21st June is the final preliminary round for Premier A this year. After that the top eight teams go through to the quarter-finals.

Wellington College has the bye this round but if there is a default you will be contacted to see if you can debate.

The leaderboard after four rounds has been updated under the Premier A tab on the right of this page.

Parliamentary Shield 2011 was held on Saturday 4 June at Victoria University. Six teams entered the tournament, and the standard was exceptionally high, with Australs and Worlds finalists making up a number of teams.

Three rounds of debates were held, after which the leaderboard looked as follows:

• Team Waikato (Christopher Bishop, Josh Baxter, Stephen Whittington) – 3 wins
• Team Coll Boys (Seb Templeton, Richard D’Ath, Udayan Mukherjee) – 2 wins
• Team Cup Runneth Over (Jenna Raeburn, Hugh McCaffrey, Clodagh O’Connor-McKenna) – 2 wins
• Vic Two (Asher Emanuel, Paul Smith, Holly Jenkins) – 1 win
• Vic Three (Alex Sinclair, Olivia Hall, Eddie Foley) – 1 win
• Team Naustrals (Duncan McLachlan, Aric Shakur, Cameron Price) – 0 wins

The top two teams progressed through to the Grand Final on the motion “That benefit payments should be tied to children’s health and education outcomes”. Team Waikato (affirming) took on the Coll Boys after they narrowly edged out “Cup Runneth Over” on speaker points.

After an excellent debate, the Chief Adjudicator Polly Higbee declared that Team Waikato were the winners, in a 2-1 split decision.

The best speaker of the tournament, winning the Ben O’Connor Plate, was Stephen Whittington.

Thanks to Polly Higbee, Daniel Wilson and Johanna McDavitt for adjudicating during the weekend, and everyone to entering.

Premier A round 4 is being hosted at Wellington East Girls’ College. The round is on Tuesday 7th June. Be there at the normal 6:30pm when the prep time will begin.

The team with a bye this round is Tawa College.

Yesterday the WSU held its annual impromptu debating tournament, open to all to enter. Thanks to Samuel Marsden for providing the venue for the day.

Nine teams entered the competition. It was particularly pleasing to see some school students enter, as well as some people from Auckland. The standard of debating was very high, with former winners of the Parliamentary Shield as well as multiple winners of the university impromptu tournament (Easters) all participating.

There were four rounds of debates, followed by semi-finals and the Grand Final. The topics are listed below.

The semi-finalists (in order) were Seb Templeton & Richard D’Ath, Paul Smith & Clodagh O’Connor-McKenna, Udayan Mukherjee & Ella Edginton, and Joe Connell & Kevin Moar.

In the semis, Seb and Richard defeated Joe and Kevin, and Udayan and Ella defeated Paul and Clodagh.

The Grand Final was an excellent debate on the motion “That we should return cultural treasures to their place of origin”. The three judges (Stephen Whittington, Christopher Bishop and Daniel Wilson) were unanimous in awarding the debate to the affirmative team of Udayan Mukherjee and Ella Edginton, who thus won the Victoria Shield for the first time.

Thanks to the adjudicators: Stephen Whittington, Christopher Bishop, Polly Higbee, Daniel Wilson and Tom Mathews.

Topics

Round One

• That we should recriminalise prostitution
• That heterosexual couples should get Civil Unions in solidarity with homosexual couples

Round Two

• That we support price gouging in response to natural disasters
• That we support the bailout of AMI

Round Three

• That ultra fast broadband is an ultra fast boondoggle
• That we should ban the publication of opinion polls during election campaigns

Round Four

• That the West should put troops on the ground in Libya
• That we support a foreign policy of non-interventionism

Semis

• That we support ticket scalping
• This House would allow politicians to make specific election promises legally binding in the event of victory

Final

• This House would return cultural treasures to their place of origin
• This House would force purchasers of art to pay a royalty to the original creator

Thanks to all teams for getting their results in so promptly. The affirmative teams tended to prevail in this round, which was on whether New Zealand needs a new flag.

The results below show the winning team in bold.

Sacred Heart v St Bernard’s
HIBS v St Oran’s
Chilton v St Pat’s (Silverstream)
St Pat’s (Town) v St Catherine’s
QMC v Tawa College
Wellington College v Scots College
St Mary’s v Hutt Valley High
Marsden v Wellington East Girls’
Wellington Girls’ – BYE